I emailed a tweet I’ve just stumbled upon in my tweetstream to a colleague because I knew it had to do with one of her interests.

We cannot spend all our time on hanging out in the stream but the larger is the circle of friends who care for us, the better are the chances that we can stay informed not only 0.5% but maybe 1% of what we need to know about what is happening in the noosphere.

She responded, “You’re a good sensor, you ….”

That inspired the following message from me, which I decided to share here because I’m curious of what y’all think of it.

It’s a kind of “organic” sensor that feeds on feedback that moves action… In other words, I let collective intelligence use me for organizing itself in the following way:

I send the gems I pick up on my surfpath to friends all over the world, to whom one or the other piece I think can be relevant. Then, I use the quality of feedback, the excitement it generates (or not) to refine my filtering-and-forwarding strategy.

I guess it takes a great deal of imagination to make sense out of what I try to express here. I could use if in the comments to this post, you would share whatever it triggers in you.

George, as I am much on the internet and having interest in many different areas, I understand what you are saying. And I am always grateful for hints and links of friends who think that can be useful for my work and/or development. That’s what friends are for.

Yes, indeed, Heinz! And while friends are doing what they are for, I think something else is also happening, maybe unbeknownst to them. Patterns of connections are getting generated in the global brain, and maybe even the trust and intelligence flowing through them can reach wider and deeper. Does that make some sense?

First it feels like “Indra’s web” – where we are all nodes in her sensing field.

Second I believe in following the energy – so when you are excited by something, it excites me.

Third, when I pay the linke forward to someone else – that amplifies the energy.

Fourth seems to me to be fundamental to the gaming theory I am reading about in McGonigal’s “Reality is Broken”.

And lastly (or maybe this is even the most fundamental) – by honouring our “senses” aka intuition we are respecting the qualities that I call “intelligences” and that we are using to wake up ourselves – and thru the process you describe each other too. (And of course all this is related to the Master Code in action – of taking care of self, thru taking care of others, so we can all take care of this place/planet/node of nodes). Meshful blessings and thanks for asking!!

Marilyn, heartfelt thank you for the quality of listening that lets you hear all what you just wrote about. It inspires me to engage with all 5 observations but due to lack of time, I pick only one.

> following the energy – so when you are excited by something, it excites me.

The emotional energy with which we’re responding to whatever life (or a sparring partner) presents to us is motivated by our values and openness of mind, heart, and will. (Thank you, Otto Scharmer, for helping me see that.) Through our responses to each other, flow such currencies of our planetary existence, as energy, trust, and intelligence. When two or more people connect in the name of evolving that existence, they can get upshifted by the current that is larger than their own energy/excitement. When I feel the presence of that possibility in any exchange, I try to name it, as to test whether it is so.

We can explore the formation and cultivation of higher We-spaces even in this virtual environment.

Certainly makes sense to me and I think would be clear to many. I see you as making explicit what is already the case: One part of this is “old”: we share what we love, and the feedback influences future strategy ,We used to do that when we’d share jokes in high school.

What’s new is that we’re not only relaying the same trope, we’re in a the collective process of building something new and doing it together. And we all have different takes on it . . . we don’t actually know what we’re creating in an objective sense. This is a shared creative act. All the “cooler” that we haven’t actually met most of our co-conspirators in the flesh.

But drawing attention to what we’re doing, as you’re doing George, gives the process a turbo-charge. This whole process is highly congruent, as I see it, with how life works. The recalibrating after receiving feedback you speak of is just naturally part of it, same as it was for those high-school joke tellers. (Does it seem to others that joke-telling has largely passed out of grownup culture or am i just travelling in the wrong circles?:))

> This whole process is highly congruent, as I see it, with how life works. The recalibrating after receiving feedback you speak of is just naturally part of it…

Yes, and what comes out from that re-calibrating depends on the altitude of consciousness, from which we are listening. E.g.:

A. I can reply from an objective listening with an open mind, seeking to unearth new information driven by my StriveDrive,
or
B. I can reply from a generous listening with an open heart, seeking to strengthen HumanBond,
or
C. I can reply from a generative listening with an open will (that transcends and include the open heart), seeking to serve the WholeView of what tries to emerge from the flow of communication.

The three different ways of listening you are mentioning here can be related with the Four levels of Listening and Conversation that Otto Scharmer describes in his book Theory U. The difference is all in where your act of sharing information is coming from…

To me the difference between a community and a network is that people in a community know enough, and care enough, to “look out for each others’ needs”. In this context it means that when we read we are filtering information not only with our own interests in mind but also for possible relevance to others, and we pass it on.

As people find each other in online communities, and do more “thinking openly”, we know that we can dip in now and again to get a flavour of where each others’ thinking is going. We can do our own practical learning-by-doing, and reflection and then connect in conversations, on topics of overlapping interest, which are enriched by our different perspectives. We can share information, exchange questions, gain insights and possibly create new knowledge together. Thanks to the Internet we can do all that without needing to travel to international conferences or being part of formal professional bodies. We are gradually discovering how we can be part of a world-wide shared-learning-and thinking community.

> We are gradually discovering how we can be part of a world-wide shared-learning-and thinking community.

and as we are doing that, we are becoming doors for each other to step up to a broader view of reality, seen from the vantage point of the Whole getting “happier” all the time thanks to experiencing that we are composing it

Online networks and communities allow knowledge, experience and wisdom to be shared across different lines and levels of development. Such cross fertilisation in itself speeds up individual and collective evolution by exposing us to more perspectives.

In online networks and communities I dont have to react immediately but have time and space to sense into what really matters to me in a certain context and then respond from a deeper place.
It seems easier to put the ego aside when I have time to reflect on what really matters to me rather than feeling the need to react instantly in a face to face meeting.
The more voices (incl the silence) we can hear depending on our quality of listening, the more useful we can become to the evolution of the whole.

> time to reflect on what really matters to me rather than feeling the need to react instantly

Asynchronous online communication technology can enable that but not by itself. Another factor is the intentional “let me pause” injunction becoming part of the community’s culture and our second nature…

I ‘hear’ what you are sharing/suggesting George and I appreciate its logic and intention. It reminds me of a product called Grapevine – long ago, Lotus Notes application. It wouldn’t really fly, probably because it was too far ahead of its time.

I like its reciprocal nature. As my/the feedback nudges your next steps and evolvement, your sharing nudges my appreciation (or depreciation) for you as a sensor. And vice-versa etc when my feedback extends beyond your original topic/content. And so on.

It has to do with serendipity and diversity in the audience, otherwise we get groupthink. So even not so enthusiastic responses can get you a step ahead, although I admit that positive energy is much stronger for motivation.

I wonder how a metaphor like the Army would apply and what such would mean for the collective. When we compare the sensor to the intelligence unit, what does this mean for tactics, operations, shared learning, etc? I guess the sensor needs the collective just as much as the collective needs the sensor…. and the value of both increases with the bonding and mutual working together (synthesis). Btw, I guess the intelligence unit is more goal oriented than a sensor, different purpose, so what does that mean for both?

Thanks for sharing this post. This reminds me of what you wrote in your CI paper:

“Seeing oneself as a CI connector, one may ask, how many productive conversations, and collaborative projects can I participate in before becoming spread too thin, thus reducing both the value contributed and received from them? Just how many “friends” one can have on Facebook or the other social networks before emptying the concept of “friends’ of any value? A better way to expand CI would be to focus on the part of the group’s CI that one individual can embrace, on a small number of conversations that inspires her or him. This would echo the analogy of how memory, a condition of learning, is formed in the brain.”

It makes sense to me that a part of any collective’s intelligence would be to distribute information to the parts of the system that could process that information in the way that was most beneficial to the whole system. If we come across a piece of information that we feel is important or interesting, but isn’t particularly relevant to our own personal area of focus, we can still serve the whole by making sure that that information is received by the person who does focus on that area.

It also reminds me a bit of Holocracy, where the individuals in an organization (collective) are relied on to sense “tensions” – wherever there is a gap between the organization’s current reality and future potential. It is the individual’s opportunity/responsibility to then raise the tension within the right context within the organizational system, so that it can be rapidly processed into meaningful change. Tension-driven dynamic steering, they call that.

Michael, I feel the budding CI of the process that started with this blogpost is grateful to you for letting it use you for organizing itself. It seems that you do that by connecting more of its actual and potential nodes, the various pieces of insight and information, from which a new pattern of meaning may emerge if we hang in with the process long enough.

That interpretation of your comment’s relevance to my/our getting clearer about what is happening in this exchange came from the following observation:

1. You are focusing on that part of our emergent CI, which inspires you. Doing so, you enact an analogy of how the neurons that fire together (to form a memory), wire together.

2. Another precious contribution of yours in the comment above is linking Holacracy in what is trying to emerge from this convo. It is precious because at the same time that you write about its reliance on relied on “sensing ‘tensions’ – wherever there is a gap between the organization’s current reality and future potential,” you also model how to do it. I.e. you sensed a gap between the current reality of this flow of thought nuggets, and an inkling of what it could be if enhanced by a holacratic way of self-organization.

You named that tension, which allowed me to process it into this reflection that others may pick up on and take further. Thank you.

The growing richness of this convo (in only 2 days!), feeding on such substantive notes as Marilyn’s, Andrew’s, Anna’s, yours, and mine, just to name a few, makes me think that it deserves some collaborative curation. As the chain of comments may get longer here, it will be increasingly difficult for newcomers to catch up. To compensate for that, those of us who are consummate pattern-seekers may create a summary of what has been going on, highlighting and connects the dots that most fascinate them, and naming the new questions that they give rise to.

I assume, you meant SEAFing our collective intelligence. If so my take is that effective SEAFing of CI can’t happen without the existence of a collective, which has that as a priority. Then the interesting question is:

Why people with high enough cognitive intelligence to want to SEAF their CI are lacking sufficient relational intelligence to weave the web of human bonds needed to grow such a collective?

Hello … what exciting readings these are… my heart sings when I read all this comments… for the last 2,5 years we have been exploring the realm of intuition within InCo movement, conducting 16 meeting with very diversified experts from different fields (physics, math, philosophy, business, engineering, spiritual science, shamanism….
We got motivated by innovation process when we realized that whoever we talked to about where their ideas came from, paused for a second and said, “from out there…”. So, we are trying to get deeper and deeper in the process of decision making, especially into the inspiration part. We are realizing that it is not a process, but rather a multidimensional web, which our biological sensors tap into. It seems to depend on the level of fluidity of an individual (less emotional blockages, better we “hear” the vibes). This is what we wrote after the first year of exploration… http://vibacom.si/upload/2013revijaHRMprispevekKova%C4%8Di%C4%8DBulc.pdf
We have reached deeper by now, especially in understanding that intuition goes beyond subconscious and conscious mind (in the article we still see it only as a communication channel with our sub consciousness).
We are such wonderful bio nodes in this complex biological system. If we only could organize ourselves (our school system, our own leanings) around this fact, I do believe we would need no singularity, no technological poisoning of our planet, any more – we could do it all just by understanding and developing our biological potentials… I am an idealist that believes that we needed to manifest technological era just to see how much we know and how much we can do and gain respect for ourselves and than start awakening the most profound mechanism of all – natural systems. (I feel that our sensors can sense vibes that go way beyond the Planet Earth, deep into the Universe… this mechanisms have no concept of time… I feel that the concept of density might be the next level of understanding why and how we sense the flap of the butterfly wings… I hope not too much was lost in translation). Oj, Violeta

You wrote, “we could do it all just by understanding and developing our biological potentials…”

What is the “it”that we could do “just by understanding and developing our biological potentials,” without the support of such enabling technologies as the Web that lets us have conversations, collaborate, and coordinate action, without the constraints of time and space?

it is = Connecting, collaborating, co-creating…
I get inspired by sintropy (opposite of entropy; capability of nature to create out of nonmaterial world)
and the point of view at the world as described in:
Rx,V

Oh my, George – I’m so thankful that you posted this conversation onto our Facebook thread about the potential that opens up with Violeta Bulc now in place as a node in the college of European Commissioners. Otherwise I would have missed it!

I remember the days we used to mull over our collective conversations together at my kitchen table in Brussels – practicing what you plead for here: that collective curation and skillful sifting for potent nuggets of meaning that can bond with other nuggets to create novel compounds and – who knows – even new life-forms! A small inner voice said “you could do that for this conversation” – and then a deeper knowing said “no, this one is not for you… or not yet/now”. Which adds another coloured thread to our weave: There’s more to this than just relationships between nodes. It is as if we are each rooted in our unique place in the Kosmos and can learn to hear feedback directly from ‘the source’ about what is uniquely ours to do. I often find that I am called to share information with others the way you do, George, and the longer I live, the more I recognise the Kosmos as the most dazzlingly effective switchboard!

With all the information flying around, our challenge as individual agentic players is to discern that which is ours to act on and how. I am profoundly grateful to you, George, as well as inspired and informed by your unerring dedication to your own calling over all the years that I have known you. Yours has often been a lonely and frustrating path, as you heralded the dawning of this age that is now, finally being born. A deep bow and lots of love to you!

Dear Helen, thank you for your kind words. I deeply resonate with your insight about “our challenge as individual agentic players is to discern that which is ours to act on and how.”

When I perceive myself as an individual and communal agentic player, i.e. when my expanded sense of self includes the We-spaces that I inhabit, then the “how” to act on what is mine to act on also includes prioritizing those pieces of information, which can nourish them. For me it starts with feeding the nearest niches in the ecosystem of evolutionary thought and action, and expanding from there to the larger We-spaces that I can put my arms around.

Does that make some sense to you and others reading this?

What is your own experience about the “how” to act on what is yours to act on?

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What is collective intelligence?

Collective intelligence is the capacity of human communities to evolve towards higher order complexity and harmony, through such innovation mechanisms as variation-feedback-selection, differentiation-integration-transformation, and competition-cooperation-coopetition

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